{"id":2080,"date":"2012-04-07T12:15:59","date_gmt":"2012-04-07T12:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=2080"},"modified":"2014-06-24T18:01:17","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T17:01:17","slug":"sometimes-it-really-is-rocket-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=2080","title":{"rendered":"SOMETIMES IT REALLY IS ROCKET SCIENCE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I have in my clammy little paws my contributor copy of Rocket Science<\/a>, the new anthology from Mutation Press<\/a>, edited by the estimable Ian Sales<\/a>. This fine looking volume of short stories and non-fiction features my tale of a (sort of) Mars mission, \u201cPathfinders\u201d.<\/p>\n

The seeds of \u2018Pathfinders\u2019 came to me from a couple of lectures that were put on by the BFI as part of their Kosmos retrospective on Russian science fiction films. The first was in a comment by Simon Ings<\/a> about the fundamental differences in Russian and American approaches to exploration and their national psychology. He suggested that the Russian attitude to space exploration can be traced, in part, to that nation\u2019s geography. The Russian experience of attempting to expand into Siberia was a war of attrition and nature was never truly conquered while the American expansion west encountered a, generally, more benign landscape and engendered a pioneer spirit that favoured a gung-ho attitude.<\/p>\n

And then I spent an afternoon listening to the Russian cosmonaut, Sergei Kirkalev<\/a>, talk about his experiences aboard the Mir space station as the Soviet Union fell apart on the planet below him and his later career training Russia\u2019s cosmonaut cadre. Kirkalev had an extraordinary grace, charm and composure. I found him very impressive and I tried to capture some of that as I introduced a character loosely based on him in \u2018Pathfinders\u2019.<\/p>\n

When, not long afterwards, I read Ian\u2019s pitch for Rocket Science<\/a>, it set me thinking about the reality of the modern space programme in economically straitened times and all these threads came together to form the shape of the story.<\/p>\n

So far I\u2019ve read the first two stories in the Rocket Science<\/em> \u2013 Leigh Kimmel\u2019s \u201cTell Me A Story\u201d and Stephen Gaskell\u2019s \u201cFisher\u2019s Gambit\u201d\u00a0 – and they\u2019re both very good. I feel like I\u2019m in fine company (and hope I haven\u2019t let the side down).<\/p>\n

The book is being launched tomorrow (Sunday) at Eastercon at noon and I\u2019m on a panel at 3:00 on \u201cThe Science of Rocket Science<\/em>\u201d \u2013 which should be fun. You can buy the book from the Interzone<\/em> table in the Dealers’ Room if you’re at Eastercon or it is available from all good bookshops – and a few rubbish ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have in my clammy little paws my contributor copy of Rocket Science, the new anthology from Mutation Press, edited by the estimable Ian Sales. This fine looking volume of short stories and non-fiction features my tale of a (sort of) Mars mission, \u201cPathfinders\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2081,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[20,67],"tags":[69,42,46,35],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/rocket-science.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27AP7-xy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2080"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2612,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080\/revisions\/2612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}